A Counterfeiter's Paradise (42 page)

108–109, It’s doubtful that

“I do not know…”:
Thomas Lewis’s testimony, “United States v. Philander N. Noble.” Two other witnesses, William Robinson and Isaac Buffington, claimed Thomas was present when they saw Lewis and Noble together, and one of those times was at Thomas’s own house (the other was at his mother’s).

109, Even though the

A glance at the handwriting of the original record gives a sense of Noble’s scattered speaking style—it was clearly written in haste, and Noble’s abrupt conversational jumps didn’t make transcribing his words any easier. In their writ of mittimus, the justices acknowledged the chaotic quality of Noble’s testimony, declaring that he had “stated many contradi[cti]ons in the account he gives of himself and of his business.”

109, The next day

Noble had two days of testimony in “United States v. Philander N. Noble”: April 4, 1813, and April 5, 1813. On April 4, he didn’t tell the full story of his journey to Canada but did offer a few sentences on crossing the St. Lawrence River with someone named Brown—omitting Lewis, of course. On April 5, he admitted that
Lewis was present along with Brown, and gave a much more detailed account of the trip. It’s unknown who Brown was, as he doesn’t seem to have accompanied them to Bellefonte. Benjamin Forsyth: Richard V. Barbuto, “Forsyth, Benjamin,”
Encyclopedia of the War of 1812
, p. 191. Width of the St. Lawrence: C. P. Lucas,
The Canadian War of 1812
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), p. 83.

109–110, If the travelers

The Battle of Ogdensburg: Lucas,
The Canadian War of 1812
, pp. 82–84. At his espionage hearing, “United States v. Philander N. Noble,” Noble alleged that he and Lewis came to Ogdensburg “a few days” before the British attack; if the story is true, this would be around February 19, 1813. Although nothing else exists in the record after Noble’s last day of testimony, the case was almost certainly dropped for lack of evidence. A conviction would mean death; the engraver was alive and well two years later, when he and Lewis counterfeited currency at a mountain campsite.

110, Noble and Lewis

Contemporary observers commented on the resemblance between bankers and counterfeiters. Mihm, in
A Nation of Counterfeiters
, pp. 8–9, quotes Hezekiah Niles—the Baltimore-based editor whose
Weekly Register
was a popular newsmagazine—and John Quincy Adams discussing the similarity between the two.

110–111, The war with

Illicit trade with the British: Hickey,
The War of 1812
, p. 224. Bill authorizing new Pennsylvania banks: Hammond,
Banks and Politics in America
, p. 165.

111, Horrified at the prospect

“Eastern mercantile cupidity…”:
quoted in Henry Adams,
History of the United States of America
During the Second Administration of James Madison
, vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921), p. 16. Snyder vetoed the measure on March 19; it was passed over his objections on March 21. Soaring number of notes in circulation: Hickey,
The War of 1812
, p. 224.

111–112, Skyrocketing quantities of

Invasion of the Chesapeake and razing of Washington: Hickey,
The War of 1812
, pp. 195–202. Subsequent panic and bank suspension: Hammond,
Banks and Politics in America
, pp. 227–230, and Hickey,
The War of 1812
, pp. 224–225.

112, The federal government

Efforts to fund the war are outlined in Curtis P. Nettels,
The Emergence of a National Economy, 1775–1815
(Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1989 [1962]), pp. 331–333. Federal government’s financial distress: Hickey,
The War of 1812
, pp. 222–225; Hammond,
Banks and Politics in America
, pp. 227–230; and Edwin J. Perkins, “Financing the War of 1812,”
Encyclopedia of the War of 1812
, p. 184. Suspension of specie payments didn’t end until February 1817, and even then, resumption wasn’t universal and banknotes continued to circulate at a discount depending on the institution; see Hammond,
Banks and Politics in America
, pp. 246–250.

112–113, Anyone who glimpsed

Scenic details of the Allegany range: James Flint,
Flint’s Letters from America, 1818–1820
, vol. 9 of
Early Western Travels, 1748–1846
, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: A. H. Clark, 1904 [1822]), pp. 74–77; Thaddeus Mason Harris,
Journal of a Tour into the Territory Northwest of the Alleghany Mountains
, vol. 3 of
Early Western Travels, 1748–1846
, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: A. H. Clark, 1904 [1805]), pp. 325–329; and Morris Birkbeck,
Notes on a Journey in America, From the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois
(London: Severn, 1818 [1817]), pp. 30–35. Traveling in September 1818, Flint observed large numbers of westward-bound homesteaders, “chiefly occasioned by people in the eastern States having reaped and disposed of their crops at this season, and on that account finding it a convenient time for removing to the western country.” A word on the geography: what was known as the Allegany range is located about fifteen miles west of Bedford and labeled on a map of Pennsylvania in the 1814 edition of Mathew Carey’s
General Atlas
,
http://www.mapsofpa.com/19thcentury/1814carey.jpg
. The Alleghenies, on the other hand, is a term that was used by people in Lewis’s day to refer to the entire mountainous region in central Pennsylvania, which forms a part of the massive Appalachian Mountains system.

113, The scenery was

The account of the campsite: from testimony at Lewis’s 1816 trial by Michael Miller, a local tavern keeper who saw the counterfeiters frequently, and Jacob Kinsey, a German immigrant who stumbled across the hideout on a hunting trip. Their statements appear in the fifty-eight handwritten pages of trial transcript; portions of their testimony are transcribed in Macneal, “A Suspicious Camp, An Arrest in Bedford, and Showdown on the Sinnemahoning,” pp. 36–38.

113, If the walls

Details drawn from Michael Miller’s testimony. Miller stated that Lewis and Smith first came to his tavern on September 5, 1815; three days later they were joined by Noble and Crosby, who brought the wagon and trunks. Noble “talked a little like a Yanky,” according to Miller. Description of James Smith:
American Volunteer
, May 9, 1816.

113–114, Miller might have had

“They gave me the Jug almost full—I write with it steady,” said Miller at Lewis’s trial. The trunks no doubt held counterfeiting tools. One witness at Lewis’s trial, Elie Beatty, speculated that a trunk of that size “would contain paper and plates to print 50,000 Dolls. of 100s, 50s, and 20s.”

114, It had been

Miller testified the counterfeiters stayed for three weeks: from September 5 to September 26, 1815. He visited the camp three weeks after they left, and found that almost nothing remained, except for the knife and the hut.

114, Lewis and his

Different types of bad bills: Macneal, “Uttering, Publishing and Passing—Counterfeiting in 1816,” p. 31, and Lynn Glaser,
Counterfeiting in America
:
The History of an American Way to Wealth
(Philadelphia: Clarkson N. Potter, 1968), p. 273.

115, These creative swindles

Newspapers had printed information about how to detect counterfeit bills since the colonial era, and the tradition continued into the nineteenth century: Baltimore editor Hezekiah Niles was particularly outspoken, and used his
Weekly Register
to draw attention to the problem. The first banknote reporter/counterfeit detector probably appeared in 1805, printed by the publishers of the Boston-based newspaper the
Centinel
. The format proved enormously popular, and beginning in the 1820s, banknote reporters came into wide use; see Glaser,
Counterfeiting in America
, pp. 87–89, and Mihm,
A Nation of Counterfeiters
, pp. 235–253.

115–116, The dizzying diversity

Fluctuating values of different notes: Mihm,
A Nation of Counterfeiters
, pp. 248–250, and Macneal, “Uttering, Publishing and Passing—Counterfeiting in 1816,” pp. 28–29. Rates in Baltimore in 1818: Macneal, “Uttering, Publishing and Passing—Counterfeiting in 1816,” p. 29. For an example of a local newspaper publishing
discount rates, see the Reading, Pennsylvania-based
Berks and Schuylkill Journal
, February 8, 1817. Opportunities for currency speculation were no secret; a letter to the
Weekly Aurora
, July 14, 1817, describes a scheme for exploiting the exchange rate between Philadelphia and Cincinnati paper.

116, All of this

The notes Lewis, Noble, and company counterfeited:
American Volunteer
, January 18, 1816, and testimony from Lewis’s 1816 trial. Noble disappeared after he and Lewis parted ways at the end of September 1815. According to an article in the
Bedford Gazette
, April 13, 1816, reprinted in the
American Volunteer
, May 9, 1816, the engraver returned to Canada.

116–117, After splitting with

Lewis’s aliases: testimony from several witnesses at his 1816 trial. A rough time line of Lewis’s journey: Douglas Macneal, “A Brief Chronology of Firm Dates in David Lewis’s Life,”
Centre County Heritage
24.2 (Fall 1987), pp. 23–24. For a map of the counties that Lewis traveled through, see the map in the 1814 edition of Mathew Carey’s
General Atlas
,
http://www.mapsofpa.com/19thcentury/1814carey.jpg
. Descriptions of the different counties: Charles B. Trego,
A Geography of Pennsylvania
(Philadelphia: Edward C. Biddle, 1843), pp. 183–187, 247–248, 295–296.

117, On the last

Account drawn entirely from James Shoaff’s testimony at Lewis’s 1816 trial, as recorded in the fifty-eight pages of trial transcript.

118, Sometimes Lewis relied

Account drawn entirely from Thomas McClellan’s testimony at Lewis’s 1816 trial, as recorded in the fifty-eight pages of trial transcript.

CHAPTER FIVE

120, In the first

Description of Bedford: Fortescue Cuming,
Cuming’s Tour to the Western Country, 1807–1809
, vol. 4 of
Early Western Travels
, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: A. H. Clark, 1904 [1810]), p. 65, and
North View of Bedford, PA
(1840), a drawing by Augustus Kollner. Town’s chaotic mood in early 1816: Ned Frear,
Davey Lewis
(Frear Publications, 1999), pp. 11–13. Frear, the former publisher of the
Bedford Gazette
(published since 1805 and still in print), includes excerpts from old, hard-to-find
issues of the
Gazette
and snippets of letters written by local lawyers. There are no exact population figures for Bedford in 1816: the 1810 census was destroyed in a fire, and the 1820 census puts the population of Bedford borough at 789.

120–121, Among its buildings

Bedford’s houses: Cuming,
Cuming’s Tour to the Western Country
, p. 65. Court-house jail:
History of Bedford, Somerset and Fulton Counties, Pennsylvania
(Chicago: Waterman, Watkins, 1884), pp. 196–197, and Mark Dugan,
The Making of Legends: More Stories of Frontier America
(Athens, OH: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1997), p. 40. Nightly guard at the jail: from a letter by David Mann to John Tod, dated January 18, 1816, in the “John Tod Papers, 1783–1838,” Manuscript Group 126, “John Tod Papers, 1783–1838,” Box 6: General Correspondence, 1816–1818, in the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg. Ned Frear uncovered the letters written by Bedford lawyers about the case to John Tod, and draws on them extensively in his
Davey Lewis
.
“You cannot conceive…”:
from a letter by James Carson to John Tod, dated January 15, 1816, in the “John Tod Papers, 1783–1838”; in the same letter, Carson says that “secret spies,” or informers, were coming to Bedford in droves. “Proof is pouring in from every direction,” declared the
Bedford Gazette
, quoted in Frear,
Davey Lewis
, p. 11.

121, The man at the

“in his element…”:
from a letter by James Carson to John Tod, dated January 15, 1816, in the “John Tod Papers, 1783–1838.” Description and background of Samuel Riddle: G. T. Ridlon,
History of the Ancient Ryedales and their Descendants in Normandy, Great Britain, Ireland, and America, from 860 to 1884
(Manchester, NH: published by the author, 1884), pp. 211–212. Riddle’s coal business: John Woolf Jordan, ed.,
A History of the Juniata Valley and Its People
, vol. 1 (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1913), p. 306.

121–122, Trying to bring

Lewis identifying himself as David Wilson Lewis from Philadelphia:
Bedford Gazette
, quoted in Frear,
Davey Lewis
, p. 10. William Drenning’s arrest:
Bedford Gazette
, quoted in Frear,
Davey Lewis
, p. 10. Drenning’s son:
Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser
, January 25, 1816.

122, As Riddle built

Lewis having $1,900 at the time of his arrest:
American Volunteer
, January 18, 1816. $1,500 in the bank: according to a local attorney named J. W. Sharpe, quoted in Frear,
Davey Lewis
, p. 26. In the docket book for the trial held by the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg—
Commonwealth
v.
David Lewis
, Numbers 2, 3, 4, Docket of the 4th District, Court of Oyer and Terminer, Bedford County, Pennsylvania (January and February Terms, 1816)—the court states on January 5, 1816, that it cannot interfere with the defendant’s decision to pay one of his lawyers, George Burd, Esq., $200. Philadelphia prices:
Grotjan’s Philadelphia Public Sale Report
, January 1, 1816.